The Most Epic Fail of Westeros: The Worst Decision in Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones is remembered for many things, including portrayal of its characters as flawed people, capable of mistakes.
But, well, sometimes what they do is less of a "mistake" and more of an "act of abject idiocy that was obviously going to cause a disaster".
Discussions on what was the most epic fail of Westeros continue on the net to this day, and they are further aggravated by the fact that the TV series made some character decisions far more unreasonable compared to what they were in the books.
But whenever such discussions occur, one act always either takes the prize or ends up among the top three worst decisions in the series. And frequently it is mentioned among the worst decisions ever made by the showrunners, rather than the characters, too!
We, of course, are talking about Robb Stark marrying Talisa.
To explain a bit, in George Martin 's books, Robb Stark too married in violation of the marriage promise given to Lord Frey, his crucial military ally. But the woman he marries was Jeyne Westerling, a daughter of one of the noblest families in Westeros, which had one big fault as a wife – her family had very little in the way of soldiers and riches to fuel Robb's war. Well, that, and the fact that marrying her mortally insulted Freys, who had plenty of solders and riches, and controlled Robb's only way home.
The series raises the bar of stupidity a good deal higher, by replacing Jeyne Westerling with Talisa, a "nurse from Volantis", not just a penniless commoner, but a foreigner penniless commoner, before we even consider implications of a lonely woman accompanying a medieval army in a place that is a good deal grittier and dirtier than most of the real Middle Ages.
A ruthless autocrat, secure in his power, could have gotten away with such a stunt, but Robb is none of those things, he's a feudal King ruling by consent of his chief vassals and stuck in the middle of civil war.
Furthermore, the circumstances of the whole affair were changed for the worse. In the books, Robb slept with Jeyne right after he received news about (alleged) deaths of his younger brothers, while recovering from an injury, clearly not in the right state of mind, and after that tried to do the "honorable" thing by marrying her.
In the series we get a rebellious "let's defy social norms because I can" romance, which is one of the most clichéd things in existence, and which takes the whole deal into the realm of truly epic stupidity.